Five in your Eyes

*‘Sensla fi sensla, Sensla metkessla, fiha khouk, fiha bouk w fiha soultan elmoulouk’* سنسل في سنسل فية كل This is an algerian riddle I remember well from my childhood growing up. It translates roughly to ‘A chain in a chain, a lying chain, in it is your brother, your father and the ruler of angels’ what is it? … the answer would be — the graveyard. Not only does the riddle rhyme in the algerian arabic dielect, the answer has a less dark and morbid connotation in arab cultures than in the west. Rather than thinking of life and reproduction as a chain this riddle proposes the graveyard with family ancestors as links in a chain. The Khamsa (Arabic: خمسة), also known as the hand of Fatima, is a symbol used to protect against the evil eye, a malicious stare believed to be able to cause illness, death or just general unluckiness. *khamsa fi ainyk* ("five \[fingers] in your eyes") is a saying to deflect the evil eye (or literally just *the eye)* verbally. The symbol even made it to the cover of my Algerian passport protecting me internationally if I want it or not. Aside from superstition it seems to me that Amulets and Talismans can protect the wearer from very real fears: the fear of ill intention and envy by others in case of the khamsa. The fear to lose the connection to roots, nationality and identity (closely tied to pride and affiliation) through pendants in the shape of the national borders, or in the shape of the whole continent in the case of Africa (not that I have ever seen a necklace in the shape of another continent). The fear of classist discrimination in the case of chains in Hip Hop maybe? The fear of poverty through savings and wealth in form of jewelry, less volatile to market fluctuations. And obviously the fear of death in case of religious symbols. The terror managment theory proposes a basic psychological conflict resulting from having a evolutional self-preservation instinct while realizing that death is inevitable and to some extent unpredictable. This conflict produces terror, which is managed through escapism and cultural beliefs that counter biological reality with more significant and enduring forms of meaning and value through symbolic immortality. For example, values of national identity, lineage, posterity,  superiority over animals, legacy and work. This relates closely to finding, assigning and maintaining meaning. Especially in more abstract art disciplines we search nervously for meaning and reason. If there is no meaning there is a problem. Reading through the articles of this current issue of Umbau I felt not only a continious anxiety dealing with conflicts and challenges of current times but also a protective and hopeful tone in the texts, condensed in form of the titles. So I made a necklace, with Amulets (providing protection from danger) and talismans (attracting good luck) as a measure to cope with my own and with generational fears. A middle finger Khamsa, the shape of the mediterranean ocean, pangea, a spiral galaxy, the ghost of the german eagle, the Stuttgart Horse, Africa upside down, a raging bull, an AI-trained human 3d-model, a creepy baby, a derpy elephant, a burning flower, a branch or scar, a scorpion, a bird or missile, a symbol for tax money and a cute bunny. The motives are references to other articles of this issue, motives around my own national identity, inspired from pendants from my sister and my mother and motives from my sketchbook that give me joy, some charged with more, some with less meaning.